The Brothers Karamazov
Questions
The most common questions about The Brothers Karamazov, answered from the book.
- What is the summary of The Brothers Karamazov?The Brothers Karamazov tells how the murder of the old Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, in a Russian provincial town, puts to the test the faith, reason...
- What does Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov say?The Brothers Karamazov is about guilt, faith and what is done with an idea once it has been spoken: the book follows a father who did not raise his...
- Who killed Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov?Fyodor Pavlovich was killed by the servant Smerdyakov, not by Mitya, who is convicted in his place. The book does not show the murder: it recounts it...
- Who are the three Karamazov brothers?The three brothers are Dmitri, Mitya, twenty-eight years old, Ivan, and Alyosha, twenty. None was raised by their father, and each came out of that...
- Who is Smerdyakov in The Brothers Karamazov?Smerdyakov is Fyodor Pavlovich's servant and cook, a twenty-four-year-old epileptic whom the town takes to be the old man's son by a holy fool,...
- What is the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov?The Grand Inquisitor is a poem that Ivan invents and tells Alyosha in a tavern, in Book V: Christ returns to sixteenth-century Seville, and a...
- What is Ivan's Rebellion and the children's tears?"Rebellion" is the conversation in which Ivan tells Alyosha, in the tavern, why he does not accept God's world: because no future harmony is worth...
- Who is Elder Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov?Elder Zosima is the old monk whom Alyosha chooses as his master, the third and last of a line of elders in that monastery. The narrator defines him...
- Who is Grushenka, and what is the onion?Grushenka is the woman whom old Fyodor and his son Mitya compete for, a twenty-two-year-old with white skin and grey-blue eyes, who lives in a rented...
- Who are Kolya and Ilyusha in The Brothers Karamazov?Ilyusha is the nine-year-old son of Captain Snegiryov, whom Mitya humiliated; Kolya is the older schoolmate who protected him at school and later...
- What does Alyosha say in the speech by the stone, at the end of The Brothers Karamazov?At the end of the novel, by Ilyusha's stone, Alyosha tells the twelve boys that there is nothing higher, stronger, healthier or more useful for life...
- Is "If God does not exist, everything is permitted" in The Brothers Karamazov?Not in those words. The phrase the book puts into circulation is another: if there is no immortality of the soul, there is no virtue, and therefore...
- What does the epigraph of The Brothers Karamazov mean, the one about the grain of wheat?The epigraph is a verse from the Gospel of John, chapter 12, verse 24: unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but...
- Is The Brothers Karamazov Dostoevsky's most important book?Readers decide that, but there are good reasons for it to be considered so: it is the author's last novel, serialized between 1879 and 1880, a few...
- How many pages does The Brothers Karamazov have?The Brothers Karamazov runs to about 920 pages in a common edition, divided into four parts, twelve books and an epilogue, with 96 numbered chapters...
- Where should I start reading The Brothers Karamazov?Start at the beginning, in order, without skipping the preface or Book I. The Brothers Karamazov is not the easiest starting point for someone who...
- How does The Brothers Karamazov end?The Brothers Karamazov ends with Ilyusha's burial and Alyosha's speech to the boys, in an Epilogue of three chapters, five days after the trial, in...
- Where and when does The Brothers Karamazov take place?The Brothers Karamazov is set in Skotoprigonyevsk, a Russian provincial town, and in the neighboring monastery, around 1866, between late August and...
- Who narrates The Brothers Karamazov?The Brothers Karamazov is narrated by a chronicler, a resident of the town, who writes in the first person thirteen years after the events and who,...
- Why is Mitya convicted if he did not kill his father?Mitya is convicted because everything the court can verify points to him, and because the only truth that would save him reaches the court only as...
- What is the most famous line in The Brothers Karamazov?There is no official line. The most quoted one from outside, "if God does not exist, everything is permitted," is not in the book in those words and...
- Is The Brothers Karamazov hard to read?It is a demanding book, but the difficulty lies in its size and its names, not in its plot. The story fits in a few lines: a father, a landowner and...
- What did Freud say about The Brothers Karamazov?Freud devoted an essay to the novel and its author, "Dostoevsky and Parricide," in 1928. The thesis is that The Brothers Karamazov treats parricide...